Pages

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Poppy's Birthday Bash: Edmond's Baking Tips

It's almost the last day of Poppy's Birthday Bash! Today's guest poster is the wickedly charming Edmond Manning. Edmond and I bonded over vodka at the GRL retreat in Albuquerque. He's lucky we had that moment, because the clown suit almost put me off of him for life. Seriously...clowns...*shivers* But I loved him anyway and his constant ability to make me smile. He's arrived today with some tips of what not to do to my birthday cake. I wonder what he's come up with...

12 Things To Avoid Putting On Top Of Birthday Cakes

I’m sure many of us are considering making Poppy a birthday
cake. Well, purchasing a cake. Okay, maybe not purchasing a cake, but we hope
she has birthday cake. Or maybe that, you know, we had cake. Yes, fine, I’m projecting. I would like a
piece of cake. I am actually hoping that Poppy mails me a piece of cake.

Let’s pretend that it’s the party moment where we’re all
getting ready to sing. Poppy is a little drunk on the good cheer and
congeniality of her birthday-celebrating friends (also possibly buzzed from two
glasses of champagne slipped to her by her best friend) and we’ve reached the
moment where someone dims the lights and we all take a deep breath in
anticipation of singing loudly and poorly.

As the cake bearer walks toward Poppy, all smiles, what are
the twelve things that would ruin a white-frosted cake with pink tubing and sugary
red roses?

12. Broken glass

I think we all saw this one coming. Don’t put shit on a cake
that has no business being on a cake. No hilariously broken Budwiser bottles,
oily rags, used Kleenex, and broken pencils. I think most of us can avoid this
trap, but it had to be said. No household items. Nothing from the garage. When
you finish squeezing the last bit out of that toothpaste tube, throw it away.
It does not belong on cake.

Poppy: Edmond, is there some cake trauma you need to share with us? I'm thinking there must be...

11. Pineapples

C’mon. Is there anything more disappointing on a cake than
fresh fruit? Birthday cake = unhealthy sugar. It means indulgence. We lie to
ourselves and say, “I would skip
having cake, but it’s Poppy’s special day and I wouldn’t want to offend her by my
not eating a piece.” Then, oops — we accidentally get a corner piece with thick
frosting. Fruit on top of cake is an uncomfortable reminder that we should eat
better. Nobody needs that reminder. You’re ruining our cake moment.

Poppy: Hey now! Them's fighting words! Don't put pineapple on my birthday cake??? Have you lost your noodle? Have you never experienced the deliciousness that is pineapple upside down cake? There's fruit, sure, but it's carmalized fruit. Do you remember the caramel vodka? How yummy and delicious it was? Yeah, imagine that on a cake! Nom nom nom. Seriously, I have to stop thinking about this. I have to wait until my party this weekend to get my pineapple upside down cake...

10. Writing

Does it really need
to say ‘Happy Birthday Poppy?’ We all know it’s her birthday. We’re standing in
her living room, aren’t we? We wrapped a present —it’s on the credenza. Writing
gets in the way of the aesthetic appeal. The only exception to this rule is if
the frosting is really, really good (i.e. lard-based sugar or chocolate. Or
both).

In that case, written cake words become a vehicle for
getting more sugar into your system and under these circumstances, words are permissible.
In fact, with the right frosting, you might squeeze out Chapter one from A Tale
of Two Cities.

Poppy: Agreed. Lots of frosting equals happy times. So write away. Or get rid of the writing and cover that cake with lots and lots of flowers. You know, the sugary ones that make you sugar hyper from just looking at them.

9. Tiny clown heads

Are you trying to give the poor woman nightmares? They
aren’t cute, they’re horrors. Did you know clowns are specifically mentioned in
The Book of Revelations? Check out verse 16:3:
“Lo, and beware that you welcome unto your spirit, those who carnivalize
with red noses, for they shall rend your flesh with pointed teeth and devour
the meek of heart.” It’s true.

Poppy: Yes! Clowns are EVOL. I've been trying to tell everyone this for years. Thank goodness I finally have a verse to quote for proof!

8. A picture of the birthday
honoree’s face

What better way to send a mixed message to the birthday
guest than to sing a song wishing cheer and future happiness, and immediately
cut up their face and canabalize it with friends? Poor Poppy. She’s trying to reflect
on her life and what lies ahead. Meanwhile, you’re sticking a fork through her
eyelid and pulling the sugary tendrils of her retina toward your mouth. “Oh,
you’re thinking of taking a vacation, Poppy? Munch, munch, munch. That sounds
great. Go to Mexico. Munch, munch, munch.
Boy, your hair tastes delicious.”

Poppy: Note to self-Never ever do one of those picture cakes again. I will never get the retina image out of my head. Thanks for that, Edmond.

7. Paper

I’m afraid this comes from personal experience. My mom likes
to do ‘theme cakes.’ It’s not enough to make the cake and decorate it. Well,
it’s enough for me. But mom likes there to be a thematic connection between the
time of year or current events and that kid’s birthday. Two years ago, my
brother and I celebrated our August birthdays together as we always do, as they
are only a week apart. Mom frosted us a lovely cake, decorated with twin candy
suns, spiraling out their firey heat with sliced yellow and orange gum drops. Quite
charming.

She also made a small placard, attached to the cake with two
straws taped to the back to lend support. The placard looked like a billboard
on the cake, like someone had rented advertising space. The words she wrote on
this sign said, “To the sizzling suns of summer.” Get it? Suns? Sons? She made
smaller signs that had both our names on them, also paper squares.

Mom is awesome and her cakes are delicious.

However, disaster struck when metaphor and reality merged.
None of us anticipated how my brother’s and my wish-blowing breath would send deadly
solar wind currents directly to the cake’s paper-based explanation. While
assorted family members clapped at our efforts, the cake top caught fire, and
soon everything was ablaze. The straws melted, the paper turned to ash, and
really, who doesn’t want to eat birthday cake covered in paper ash?

We scraped off the fire residue and glumly ate the charred
remains. Happy birthday.

Poppy: Yikes! Good to know, though. Your mom is awfully clever...and hopefully good with a fire extinguisher!

6. Hard candy / Tic
Tacs

No.

Poppy: Double no.

5. Swedish fish candy

No.

Poppy: No squared.

4. Red licorice

C’mon. No.

Poppy: But I did see this really cute cake on Pinterest with licorice...oh, okay. No.

3. Advice

Cake is no time to get preachy. I’ve seen cakes that said,
“Live well!” and “Celebrate!” Okay, well, celebrate isn’t so terrible, I guess.
But for each of us, our birthday is a sacred, special thing. For some,
surrounded by friends and loved ones means everything. For others, a day of
quiet reflection on past and future is the thing.

Whatever your relationship with your mother, you and she did
this crazy thing together, years ago. You popped out of her va-jayjay. On a
less crude level, the day was emotionally draining for you (who cried your tiny
little eyes out) and her. Whether she coddled you, promising to always keep you
safe and happy, or she kissed you and gave you up for adoption, it was
undeniably a huge day for you both.

What’s the right way for you to celebrate? Who knows?

What you don’t need is a bossy cake telling you
how to live.

Poppy: Have you met my mother?

2. Real flowers

Sure they look pretty. Orange and yellow with faint pink
highlights. Or maybe soft lavender petals with periwinkle streaks leading right
into the stem. Lovely. But incredibly disappointing if you think you get to eat
it. I have witnessed luscious wedding and birthday cakes decorated with
gorgeous flowers and thought, ‘I can’t wait to chomp the shit out of those
pansies” only to discover they really are
pansies. Not frosted pansies. Not candy pansies. No, just pansies.

Not cool, cake decorator. Sure they look lovely and prove
you’re one-with-nature, I guess. But think of your recipients. We sing the
song, we clap when Poppy blows out the candles, and then we start removing off
the non-edibles. Off go the flowers? Damn. What’s left is a barren oil drum of
a cake, a white-frosted shell reminding us that all the beauty is gone.

Cake decorator, I can hear you saying, “Go ahead and eat one
of the flowers. They’re edible. Try one!”

Go to hell.

Poppy: And let's face it, real flowers alongside the sugary goodness that is frosting? No. Just no. A million times NOOOO!

1. Candles.

Whose brilliant idea was this? Let’s bake a delicious cake,
frost it beautifully, decorate it to reflect our love and good cheer…and then stab
it repeatedly with candles and set it aflame. But wait, that’s not all. Let’s
also sing a long song with multiple verses so that the candles have plenty of
time to melt into the frosting that two minutes ago looked very appealing.

But wait, there’s more. Two candles? Four? Nope. Let’s stab
said cake with thirty candles. Forty candles. (And in Poppy’s case, twenty-two
candles, right? That is what you told me…) How hilarious to use the
exact number of birthday candles so as to coat the entire frosted cake in a
shield of disgusting, melted wax that you discover when your teeth tell your
brain ‘I taste something that doesn’t belong.'

Whoever invented sticking candles on the cake must be laughing
their ass off at all of us for embracing that tradition.

You know what we should put on top of our birthday cakes?

More cake.

Happy birthday, Poppy.

Poppy: Thanks Edmond! And yes, a double or triple layer cake sounds so amazing right about now! But don't put candles on it. I don't need the reminder of how old I am. The cake might as well say "Flame On".

2 comments:

K, I gotta go "there" - I've often reflected to my mother that at my birth, I was traumatized by the "vajayjay", took one look and said "OH HELL NO"!!! - been a queer ever since!!! On a (much) lighter side - cakes are best topped w/Cool Whip!!! Plain and simple, and does wonders for your cholesterol level!! Oh, and I'm trying something new (for me) today - will be making brownies w/Reese's peanut butter chips!!! XOXO!!!